


The Breath in My Lungs

by kuraudosoturaifu



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuraudosoturaifu/pseuds/kuraudosoturaifu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fourteen year old John Egbert is terminally ill in the hospital. Bored and wanting to preoccupy himself from thoughts of the future, he starts creating adventures in his own head with the help of his friends and documenting them along with his experiences in the hospital in his journal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breath in My Lungs

Your name is John Egbert. You are fourteen years old, and you are sick.

It's not the kind of sick where you have to stay home from a couple days and feel lousy. That kind isn't even that bad because when you're that kind of sick Dad usually takes pity on you and hauls a TV into your room with your old Playstation so that you can at least enjoy yourself a little. And he always makes you the food you like best. And it's not the kind of sick, either, where the illness is in your head. You're not mentally ill, but to be honest, sometimes you envy the people who are.

You're the kind of sick where the only way you can breathe is through tubes stuck into your nose. And walking is really too much for you. So are normal teen things like going to the mall, or drinking alcohol, or any stupid thing like that. You're the kind of sick where you're in an unfamiliar bed in a room with unfamiliar walls and a ceiling that always confuses you a little when you wake up because it's not the ceiling with the star stickers that you plastered on there when you were six.

Everyone says you'll get the best care here and they'll do the very best they can with you, but you know that at this point, they're all just tiptoeing around the elephant in the room; they're all just trying to make you comfortable, really. The doctors say "We'll do what we can", but they can only do so much, and they've already done it. Right now, though, you have to admit that you're feeling comfortable enough. There's the dull ache in your arm that's always there from different tubes being jabbed into you all the time, and you're a little sore because you've been in your bed for too long watching old movies you can't say you really like anymore, but you're not in pain right now. Which is usually what a good day for you entails, really, so you're not so bad right now. Every morning and at different intervals during the day the nurse asks you to gauge your pain from one to ten, with one being no pain at all and ten being excruciating, put-me-out-of-my-misery sort of pain, which is kind of gruesome and unpleasant to think about when you realize that your record is a nine. But today, your level is at a one, and things about as alright as they can get for someone who has to breathe through tubes all the time.

The phone sitting next to you on the bed beeps, alerting you to a new text message. It's from Rose.

" _I can be there at 3:30. Is that okay with you?_ "

You respond "of course! i think my dad will be back at 4:30 though, just in case you want to get out of here before helicopter parent time."

" _He loves you, you know_."

" _hehe, yeah, of course i know_."

Your dad loves you more than anything in the world. And you're sick, and he has absolutely every right to want to be around you all the time. Sometimes you feel worse for him than you do for yourself, because he's got to deal with being a single parent losing his only kid. You just kind of wish he'd stop bringing you cake because it's not something someone with a weak stomach really wants to eat. But you can't really complain, because man do you love your dad and man does it make you sad that it's taken you this long to realize that, and that just when you see him as something more than an overbearing annoyance, you're about to go and die on him. He doesn't like to use the term "die" - he doesn't even like to refer to you as a terminal individual. You don't think he's quite in denial, but he doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that in like, a couple months tops, you're going to be gone. You don't know how he can cope with that knowledge. You're not even really sure how you cope with it yourself. You just try not to think about it, you guess.

Rose arrives at 3:29 - always a minute early - and comes to sit in the well-used chair by your bedside. Not that it's really been well-used just for you; your friends and dad have come and gone, but it's a lot more worn down than just that, and it's kind of a constant reminder that a lot of other people have been through this room, and it kind of brings you down. You two both sit in silence for a moment, you examining the pattern on her schoolbag and her examining the tangle of extra bedsheets at your feet. You know she's looking at them, and you know that she's just itching to go and fix them, to smooth them out, but you have nurses to do that and she knows that you don't like to be babied, so she lets it go and smiles.

"You look well."

"I look like your typical cancer patient," you say, smiling a little.

She smiles back. "You've looked worse."

"When have I ever looked worse?"

"Do you remember when Dave's brother decided to drive us all down to Disneyland and the car trip was so long, and all you could do was complain and eventually you were sick in the car?"

"Oh my god, I try not to remember that one," you say, chuckling.

She grins. "Compared to that, you look just dandy."

You take a moment to look at Rose. She's so proper, so composed. Will that change after you're gone? You don't want her to change. You don't want anyone to change or be affected by your death, really. You hear about all these people trying to make their mark on the world, trying desperately to become rich and famous and leave behind their memory in any way possible. But for you, it's always just been about being happy. That's always been enough. Even now, that's been enough, and if you've got to be honest, you don't really like the idea of your friends being affected by your death. You want them to remember you, hopefully fondly of course, but you don't want to change them because when you think about it, they're perfect people just the way they are. Rose is perfect. You look at how her hair frames her angular face, how she's always so well dressed, the way she has one sort-of dimple that's a bit more prominent when she smiles, which is always slightly more to one side so it looks more like an impish smirk. She's smart and lovely and you hope that you don't play any sort of part in changing that.

"Oh, before I forget." She reaches into her heavily patterned backpack and pulls out a small book, or at least what looks like a book at a glance. As you get a better look, you can see that it's a journal. She hands it to you.

"Is this for me?" you ask, as if it would be for anyone else. She nods and smiles.

"Wow, Rose... Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

The journal is average-sized, and the cover is blue. The ribbon bookmark is green, and the pages are tinted a light purple. The lines on the paper are red, and it's at this point that you realize that this entire journal is handmade. And the colors - they're all your text colors from the program Pesterchum, the one that you've been using a lot more as of late since you really don't have a lot to do in the hospital and your friends can't be visiting all the time.

"Did you... did you make this?" you ask, turning the crisp, empty pages.

"Yes, I did. You know, John, I've always thought you'd make a good writer. You have a lot to say and you're a thoughtful individual. And I know that there's more in that head of yours than dull movies and less-than-stellar video games, and I want you to write it down. And don't think of it as some "documenting your stay in the hospital" sort of thing, I just want you to write about whatever, because you're brilliant and I want you to appreciate your own writing for once."

You don't really know how to respond to this, but you manage to say, "Wow... Thank you so, so much. Honestly. And I'm going to write in this every day, just you watch! About whatever. But maybe just to spite you for that remark about my movies and video games, maybe that's all I'll write about." You stick your tongue out at her, and she smiles and pushes your shoulder very lightly, but still playfully.

"Whatever," she says, and laughs a little, and for the moment everything is okay, and you can hear the little nurse in your head saying, "Okay, please rate how everything in your life is going right now, with one being absolutely terrible and ten being the best it can be", and even though you're a cancer patient and you're terminal, you look at Rose's smile and the journal in your hands and you think that you've got to be at least a nine.

***

_January 13_

_I fell asleep just a little while after Rose gave me this journal, which was kind of a bummer but we talked about stuff for a little while before I passed out and it sounds like everything is going well in her life, which makes me happy._

_Dad came by about 4:45. He was running a little late because he was trying to find just the right type of flowers for me. He put them in a vase by my bed before waking me up with a hug, and for the first time since my first night in this particular hospital I hugged him back really tight, and to be honest, it made me really happy._

_One thing about cancer is the fatigue. I've fallen asleep on both Dad and Rose today and I feel a little bad. I know they understand, but still._

_Dave's coming by tomorrow, too, so I should rest for that. I'd write more since this is my first entry, but I'm really tired._

_Also, Rose left four mechanical pencils on my night stand to write in here with - I'll let you guess which colors they were._

_With love,_

_John_


End file.
